The present invention relates to a musical entertainment apparatus including a loudspeaker for producing an orchestral background for singer's accompaniment and a TV monitor for displaying a background video relevant to a song sang by the singer.
Recorded video signals with orchestral music as an orchestral background for singers, a form of entertainment known as "karaoke", are usually provided with superimposed song test. An apparatus to this effect will hereinafter be referred to as "entertainment apparatus".
In order to speed up the searches of the background video and the song selected by an entertainer to sing, and due to a large quantity of background video data and music data, the background video and orchestral music accompaniment have usually been recorded on the same video disk together with song text to be superimposed on the background video. The video data and the music accompaniment data are recorded in linkage in order that the background video and the orchestral music accompaniment may be reproduced in sync with each other. The background video and the song text to be superimposed thereon are also recorded in linkage. Therefore, the same background video always appears on the TV monitor whenever the same song is selected for entertainment. Replacement of the background video for the same song cannot be achieved. In this respect, the conventional entertainment apparatus is not satisfactory, since there is a command that a desired background video be selected depending upon the user's preference.
For the entertainment apparatus of commercial use, it is necessary that a number of video disks be stocked and for the sake of a user's unlimited selection of songs, new video disks should be supplemented to cover new songs. To do so, the owner of the apparatus has heavy expense to bear, and on the other hand it is burdensome for the disk manufacturers in producing a; new video suitable for the new song.
As a solution for such problems, it has been proposed to use a still picture instead of a moving video, as disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 60-214178. However, the use of a still picture while one is singing a song, which typically continues for a few minutes, is monotonous and thus unsatisfactory.